Bridge the generation gap to improve workplace efficiency

Each generation has its preferred way of working. Only by delivering the right technology to the right user can you optimise your workplace to suit them all.

Look at any of your teams and what do you see? A mix of people spanning different generations from baby boomers to Generation X and Millennials, with Generation Z waiting in the wings.

How can they best work together when they all work in such different ways? A study by EY1 analysed the perception that each generation had of themselves and each other. The baby boomers, born from 1946-64 before there was much technology, are typically good team players. They like a more formal workplace and don’t adapt well to new technologies.

Generation Xers, born before 1980, and known as the doers, are entrepreneurial and technology-minded.

The Millennials, also known as Generation Y, who started work in the age of technology, are inevitably more tech-savvy (78% of the EY study agree). While they are most enthusiastic about their jobs they scored lowest on being a team player (45%). Yet these anytime, anywhere Generation Yers are keen on platforms that enable them to collaborate and share wherever they are.

Finally, add in to the mix Generation Z – born between 1995 and 2010 – who are just starting in the workplace. Just as importantly they are the generation to please as they will make up 40% of US consumers by 20202.

How do you create an efficient workplace that melds together these different generations into more productive teams?

Not all generations are equal

Whatever their experience with technology, each generation has their own approach to work. As the younger generations, the true digital natives, come to be in the majority the expectations of what can be achieved from technology are ever greater.

So, it is technology that creates the new workplace and enables more productive teamwork.

Nearly half today’s workforce (46%) is looking to new technologies for better performance in the workplace, according to the Intel Office of the Future study.

Three in five employees believe technology will make face-to-face communication obsolete soon – while 60% are more interested in the hi-tech perks a digital workplace offers than low-tech perks like ping pong tables and free food3. The ones most influenced by high-tech are the Millennials: with 80% saying workforce technology would decide the jobs they would accept3.

Bridge the generation gap

To deliver solutions that optimise the workplace for all users involves finding the technology that best suits them:

The right device – to suit the job they do, whether they work on the go or are office-based.

Efficient collaboration – with an easily-integrated platform that engages everyone and raises productivity